


Longed For As the Sunwarmed Earth

by PhryneFicathon, whopooh



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M, Phryne Ficathon, Post S3E8, Reunion, literary fluff, the homecoming of Phryne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-02-23 14:45:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13192311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhryneFicathon/pseuds/PhryneFicathon, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whopooh/pseuds/whopooh
Summary: Jack was casually walking into his office at City South when he stopped dead in the doorway. Incredulous, he saw a black-haired lady sitting in his visitor’s chair. The indomitable, clever, mesmerizing lady he’d longed for so much it had rather become second nature to him.“I was afraid the sirens would have taken hold of you on your odyssey,” he said. “Or perhaps Calypso on her island.”“And I was afraid you might have run out of yarn for your weaving,” she replied.A reunion fic set after S3E8.





	Longed For As the Sunwarmed Earth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [afterdinnerminx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterdinnerminx/gifts).



> Written to the prompt “If I am not Ulysses, I am / his dear, ruthless half-brother.” (Yusef  
> Komunyakaa, _The Emperor of Water Clocks_ )

Jack was casually walking into his office at City South when he stopped dead in the doorway. Incredulous, he saw a black-haired lady sitting in his visitor’s chair. She was there as if it was the most natural thing in the world. As if she’d hardly been gone at all, the last year nothing but an odd week or two. 

He had only been out for an hour or so, investigating a crime scene with one of his constables. Just like any day. And now he came back to this – Phryne Fisher back in Australia, as suddenly as she had disappeared. The indomitable, clever, mesmerizing lady he’d longed for so much it had rather become second nature to him. He wasn’t sure if he should rush over and embrace her or not; he couldn’t process his emotions as quickly as it seemed this day was demanding of him. 

“You’re back,” was all he managed to say.

She was there. She was home. They had exchanged letters and she had said she was going to come back, but she had been terribly vague about when and how and he’d started to believe the worst. He eyed her, waiting to see if she would give him any cue as she turned around to face him.

“I’m back.” She rose from the chair. “You kept me waiting.”

He smiled his lopsided grin then, amused by the idea that __he__ had kept __her__ waiting.

“For all of fifteen minutes,” she continued, rolling her eyes in pretend annoyance as she smiled at him.

He closed the door behind him and went to hang up coat and hat on the coat rack, grateful to have a reason to move and a reason not to look at her. When he turned around again, his eyes sought hers out.

“I was afraid the sirens would have taken hold of you on your odyssey,” he said. “Or perhaps Calypso on her island.”

Phryne smiled wistfully. She didn’t turn away her gaze for one second, letting him see her just as she was: open, unguarded, truthful, __there__.

“And I was afraid you might have run out of yarn for your weaving,” she replied. 

He harrumphed and looked at her with a chastising look, the humorous glint in his eye as always belying the expression. God, how she had missed that look. She had missed it so much she felt an ache in her chest even as he was standing there before her.

“Are you suggesting, Miss Fisher,” he said as he moved across the room to come closer to her, “that I am the demure Penelope waiting for my wayward hero to come home…”

Now he was right in front of her, looking down into her eyes. She could feel his body warmth and felt him reach out; she thought he would finally embrace her, as strongly and eagerly as she needed him to, but he only brought his hand up to touch her cheek. It was almost like the ghost of a touch. His mouth twisted in amusement.

“… needing to keep my countless suitors away by weaving to save my virtue?”

His eyes held hers, but he didn’t move further, his hand settling lightly on her shoulder. 

“Well, it was you who brought up the classics,” she said, smiling at him with her perfect mixture of innocence and suggestiveness. 

Jack closed the gap between them, capturing her lips with his, amazed at how it made him feel like it was only yesterday he had kissed her goodbye at the airfield. She opened her lips to immediately make the kiss deeper, deep as the ocean she’d travelled to reach him again. 

He felt his own emotions being dragged up from his innermost depths – desperation, loss, the fear of never seeing her again, of never touching her. And in this moment, when all was good and righted and those concerns a thing of the past, to his own horror he found himself sobbing into the kiss.

Phryne stopped trying to devour him and retreated a few inches, looking at him curiously.

“Jack?” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he said as he felt a tear trickle down his cheek. “I’m just… a little overwhelmed that you’re actually here.”

“I should have told you when I would arrive,” Phryne realised, saying it aloud as it hit her and rolling her eyes at her own stupidity. “I could have telegraphed from the ship.”

“That would have detracted from the comparison with the ruthless Odysseus,” he smiled through his tears, annoyed with himself for losing his composure but still aiming for light. “But I admit I would have appreciated it.”

She reached out to touch his tears with her thumb. _This wetness, all for her_ , she thought as she met his eyes. Then his mouth was on hers again – harder, more desperate, more what she needed to ground herself in this moment – and taking her breath away completely.

For an eternity it felt like the world only consisted of two things: the taste of him as he kissed her, and the feeling of his body as she pressed her arms around him. When he withdrew, she opened her eyes to watch him. He kept his eyes closed for a second before meeting her gaze again.

“You’re here,” he said again, seemingly trying the statement on.

“I am,” she said. 

“For real?” he asked, tracing her mouth with his eyes as he spoke.

“For real,” she confirmed. She watched him intently, her eyes serious, before she turned to look around the room playfully. “And where are all the suitors I have to slay?”

She felt slightly victorious when he barked out a laugh.

“I think I’d prefer you to help me catch a slayer instead,” he said, walking around to his side of the desk. “Here’s a tricky one. If you want to read the case files, maybe we can discuss it. Tonight? If you’re not already busy?”

***

Phryne watched Jack as he lay in the bed next to her, his naked body only partly covered by the doona and his eyes closed. He’d come over for dinner, and as they talked through the case over the subsequent nightcap she had given him some suggestions to examine later. In the end, she had brought him to her boudoir, undone his tie and all his buttons, and ravished him thoroughly. 

She had loved every second of it: tasting the whisky on his tongue, making him groan, and finally being allowed inside all his layers of protection and temperance. She had relished the way they both literally shivered from their pent-up desire, a state that was utterly unfamiliar to her and that made his attempts at undoing her buttons excruciatingly slow. Most of all, she savoured the fact that he kept his attentiveness to details and his dry humour also in the boudoir. 

And his hands. She had dreamed of his hands, but she hadn’t been able to do them justice.

She felt deplete and filled to the brim at the same time; light as a balloon and heavy as earth; content in a way her restless soul only very seldom did. She reached out her hand to slowly trace the veins on his arm, and he opened his eyes to look at her.

“I know you had your fair share of adventures when you were away, Phryne,” he said solemnly. “Of all kinds.” 

She gave a small quirk of her eyebrow and he answered in kind – cheeky, insightful Jack Robinson, knowing full well the limits of her patience and counting on it not to last for a full year. Not without anything being settled between them; the nature of their relationship so flimsy even as it was the most grounded she could imagine. Yes, there might have been a siren or two in England, but there had been no threat to what they had been building together. Nothing that could compare to the steadiness and solid presence of the man beside her, the man who had captured her in a way she had counted on never being captured. The man who finally was by her side now, fully and without regrets.

“I know it must have been fun, and I don’t begrudge it. But I’m so happy you came back.” His eyes followed her hand as it moved from his arm to his chest and stomach. “And that it didn’t take you ten years to return to Ithaca.”

“Will you stop showing off your literary knowledge,” she laughed as she put her finger in his navel; he flinched and made a gesture of protection that ended with him caressing her lower back.

“Alright,” he concurred with a smile, and then grew serious. “But the sentiment still stands. I’m happy you’re back.”

She leaned over to kiss him – softly, lingering, one hand on his cheek – before she answered, still hovering above him.

“I could never not come home, Jack. You understand that, don’t you? It was only ever a trip, nothing more.”

His gaze flicked between her eyes, trying to measure the depths hidden within them, in the end failing to do more than drown in her gaze. He nodded, an almost invisible smile lurking in the corners of his lips.

“I’m sorry you couldn’t come and join me,” she said, touching his hair and cheek as she thought of all the crimes Melbourne had produced, seemingly to keep him from following through on her challenge. She thought of the hope she’d kept alive for the longest of time, that he would still make it, somehow. “I think you’d have loved to see England and France in peacetime.”

He hummed, catching her hand and bringing it to his lips.

“Next time, perhaps?” he said.

His face was hopeful, but never completely transparent; a mystery, even now. She looked at him intently, realising everything his question implied. 

They would be together. There would be a next time when she wanted to travel. He wouldn’t want to stop her, but he might well come with her.

Phryne felt the ache of longing for him finally move, rising from its habitual place in her chest into her eyes, and she wept at last. She breathed in shakily, using all her willpower to make her voice steady and clear. 

“Next time,” she confirmed. “We’ll tackle the sirens together.” 

As he pulled her up to straddle him, she sealed the promise with a kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt’s quote is from a poem, “Latitudes”, [ that can be read in full here](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58750/latitudes)
> 
> The title is taken from a passage in Homer’s _The Odyssey_ , from the homecoming of Ulysses:
>
>> “Now from his breast into the eyes the ache  
> of longing mounted, and he wept at last,  
> his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms,  
> longed for as the sunwarmed earth is longed for by a swimmer  
> spent in rough water where his ship went down  
> under Poseidon's blows, gale winds and tons of sea.  
> Few men can keep alive through a big serf  
> to crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beaches  
> in joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind:  
> and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband,  
> her white arms round him pressed as though forever.” 
> 
> Thank you to Fire_Sign for beta’ing!


End file.
